Awnings or canopies are known to be used to cover a portion of a ground surface to provide shade, privacy and/or improve the overall appearance of building.
In arenas, awnings or tunnel covers are often used to provide cover over a portion of the entrance tunnel area to provide a private staging area. This staging area allows groups, such as a team, to gather before entering the arenas. However, these awnings often restrict, or make it cumbersome, to transport items that have a height higher than the lowest height of the awning into the arena through the tunnel. Often, awnings have to be deconstructed or manually lifted to accommodate such items.
Further, these tunnel covers in arenas are often positioned so that they are highly visible to a large portion of the crowd and often in the camera shot of events occurring in the main area of the arena. Therefore, this presents a very valuable advertisement area. However, because the awning needs to be flexible to facilitate deconstruction, the tunnel covers are often constructed of a lightweight canvas-type material, thereby limiting advertisements to those that are printed on the tunnel cover. Therefore, to change the advertisers, the tunnel cover must either be replaced or reprinted. Therefore, improvements in awnings, specifically tunnel covers, are needed.